Hubble: Internet Reachability And Monitoring in Real-Time For Black Holes on the Internet

Spotted by Hubble

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RonPK

2:01 pm on Apr 12, 2008 (gmt 0)

A research project at the University of Washington spots sections on the Internet that cannot be reached for several hours. The project is called Hubble, after the famous space telescope. Project homepage with Black hole map [hubble.cs.washington.edu], Newswise article [networkworld.com].

"You would think that the network operators of Internet service providers would have access to better data," said Katz-Bassett. "That's not the case. The general approach has been to mail something out to a listserv and say, 'Hey, can you try this and see if you have a problem?'"

So bits do get lost, too.

webfoo

7:08 pm on Apr 12, 2008 (gmt 0)

Most perplexing!

lammert

9:47 am on Apr 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

I expected this map to be full of black spots in underdeveloped countries: Wrong!

I expected the map to show aggregate data of the last month or so: Wrong! it's all real-time

It's amazing to see how long large netblocks appear to be disconnected from the internet. I think I'll stick with my current access provider, they at least have an active connection problem solving policy.

RonPK

4:32 pm on Apr 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

Does anyone know a good hosting provider on Antarctica? No black holes reported there ;)

But it is a bit scary that the Internet is not the reliable communications network it is usually thought to be. Scary because more and more vital services rely on it.

Bewenched

5:52 pm on Apr 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

With Hughes having satellite internet access i'm sure you can get the net just about anywhere.

Robert Charlton

5:01 am on Apr 14, 2008 (gmt 0)

It's clear that there are many more of these reported black holes in heavily populated areas than in sparsely settled areas.

What's not clear from the article is whether there's a higher percentage of failure in high population density areas, or simply a higher number of failures in heavily populated areas because there are more servers there to observe.

bwnbwn

2:29 pm on Apr 14, 2008 (gmt 0)

What as well isn't clear as we all know servers go down in the internet highway and when one goes down there is a rerouting of the internet through a working server until the failed server is back on line.

I find it really hard to believe the information in the larger cities does not get to the destination really hard to believe. Some or most of the servers are down a day or more so this in itself tells me it just monitors servers within the path.

I do see this as a monitor for servers along a path but not as a means of determining the information was lost.

Name is a little deceptive to me.

LifeinAsia

3:48 pm on Apr 14, 2008 (gmt 0)

How can we automatically reroute all SPAM to these black holes?

bumpski

2:28 pm on Apr 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

These probably aren't black holes, just overzealous government wiretaps. Seems like just the right amount of data is disappearing.

They're just supposed to listen, but perhaps sometimes they absorb!

ambellina

3:49 pm on Apr 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

With Hughes having satellite internet access i'm sure you can get the net just about anywhere.

Unless it is raining, snowing, cloudy, or sometimes just too darn sunny. I hate the lack of quality of my satellite internet service. Plus their customer service is never any help. And it's slow, can't be setup with a static IP if you run a router, blah blah blah.

Thinking

1:52 pm on Jul 14, 2008 (gmt 0)

"With Hughes having satellite internet access i'm sure you can get the net just about anywhere."

"Unless it is raining, snowing, cloudy, or sometimes just too darn sunny. I hate the lack of quality of my satellite internet service. Plus their customer service is never any help. And it's slow, can't be setup with a static IP if you run a router, blah blah blah."

Well you forgot to mention how expensive it is and the FAP (Fair Access Policy). Unless your call gets escalated and makes it to advance tech support or engineering (They're in FL) they don't speak English or it's not any English I've ever heard. You'd be better off with tin cans and a string than satellite ISP

bcolflesh

8:48 pm on Jul 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

With Hughes having satellite internet access I'm sure you can get the net just about anywhere.

Years ago, I worked on some multimedia projects for their group - the tech guy told me that the service would only work correctly for a narrow band of folks in the US, relative to the position of the satellite (and weather, and a whole host of other possible disruptions). The tech guys were furious, because the marketing group advertised accounts completely out of the designated areas and then started attacking the tech group after waves of angry support calls began mounting from customers unable to connect or with completely unreliable connections.